Essay:
Accessible Architecture

Bee Breeders Competition Organisers is pleased to announce the results for its Accessible Architecture Essay Competition! This event is part of a competition series focused on accessibility, and was run in tandem with The Home for the Blind competition, which sought designs for the home of a single blind occupant.

Articulating the active role of architectural design in the disabling or enabling of its users is not an easy task. Bee Breeders and its juror sought thoughts, insight, and research that best articulates a truly equitable understanding of inclusive accessible architecture.

Bee Breeders worked with a fantastic international jury that consisted of: Jos Boys, co-founder of UK-based The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, a platform bringing together disabled artists and built environment students, educators and practitioners, author of Doing Disability Differently: an alternative handbook on architecture, dis/ability, and designing for everyday life (Routledge 2014) and editor of Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader (Routledge 2017); Persis Lam, an associate at Toronto-based Diamond Schmitt Architects, and executive member of Building Equality in Architecture Toronto; Chris Downey of Architecture for the Blind, who has over 30 years of architectural experience, continuing without sight since 2008 and through whose lived experience with blindness, has added unique value to projects for or relevant to the blind and low vision community; Rosa Lorenzo Downey of Architecture for the Blind, who has honed her creative use of color theory and materiality on a broad spectrum of architectural and interior projects over the past three decades;  Fotini Pitoglou, a licensed architect in Ontario, Canada, the UK and Greece, lead architect on hospitality projects at Toronto-based FORREC, and executive member of BEAT - Building Equality in Architecture Toronto, and a member of FORREC's Diversity Equality and Inclusion Task Force; and Rion Philbin, Creative Director of No So Studio and previous founder of So & So Studio, whose past projects include the Casa-mac project, a home in Italy for a blind woman.

Bee Breeders and its jury panel thank the participants for their submissions, and congratulate the following winners for having their submissions selected for online publication.